Words
by Sonata16
Summary: This is a clear cut example of why Zero Kiryu does not have friends other than Yuki: They annoy the hell out of him. This was a short one-shot excerpt I did for a friend of mine. (One of many.) (If I get more ratings on it, I might continue it into something else. My last one-shot was a hit...can't say the same for my five chapter fan fic...)


"Why do I have to be _Britt's _ho?!"

"Yeah, why does he have to be _my _ho?! Why can't he be Lili's ho?"

"I don't want him as my ho… Make him Tiff's ho."

"_I _don't want him as my ho, either! He can be your ho, Liv."

"I'd sooner be Britt's ho than _her _ho!"

"Just for that, you're my ho, you ho!"

"No!"

The Headmaster wasn't sure if he'd ever had this much fun, and, if he happened to have had just this amount of fun or more, he couldn't remember it. Either way, he was definitely entertaining himself, watching the banter go back and forth between his foster son and the four American girls seated across from him, all in various stages of emotion as they bickered with the platinum haired youth, who was now waving his hands flamboyantly through the air as he snapped back at each of them in turn. It was quite a turn-around game, if you asked the Headmaster, considering the minute Zero said one thing to one of the girls, another piped up and had to be dealt with, which, by the end of that, would have the remaining three launching themselves right in the center of another argument.

"You're unbelievable!" Zero was now sniping at one of the petite brunette girls, who wore thick rimmed black glasses, behind which hid a pair of the darkest brown eyes the Headmaster thought he'd ever seen, including Yuki's. And, at that moment, those eyes were stoic under the set of raised eyebrows as she scrutinized the irritated boy in front of her.

"I know that much, glad you caught up," she said dully, "But why am I unbelievable again?"

"Because you have every possible ability to get all three of them to hush up and you haven't!"

"…I don't wanna…"

"SEE?!" Zero practically cracked his voice with the volume he was at. "That's _exactly _what I mean! You're unbelievable!"

"Unbelievably good looking," Brittney said slyly with a wink at her sister, who smirked for a moment.

"Aww, you're so sweet, hun," she said in reply, patting the place over her heart as though touched.

"I know," giggled Britt, then added seriously, "Just don't eat me."

"Wasn't planning on it," Tiffany assured her, returning her attention to Zero just as Olivia tapped the male with the toe of her boot, trying to inch him away.

"Zero, my fine gentleman, you are within my personal boundaries," she was saying, and Tiff snickered.

Zero glared daggers at both of them, hands fisted at his sides, a very prominent tick going on his right temple, indicating that his blood pressure was probably at the level where a hospital nurse would need to be administering some kind of IV sedative.

"Personal boundaries, my ass," Zero snapped at Olivia, "You have violated me to the highest degree!"

"I don't quite remember taking sexual advantage of you in the backstreets in an alley, but I might have forgotten by this point," the girl replied smartly with a small inclination of her head and a wicked smile.

Brittney wrinkled her nose, no doubt as a result of the resulting mental image in her head of Olivia taking "sexual advantage" of Zero. "Ew," she said.

"Ew, indeed," chortled the Headmaster, and was instantly faced with Zero's malevolent stare. "Oh, calm down, Kiryu, it's just a bit of fun."

"Your definition of fun is as twisted as their definition if you think this is fun," his foster son growled at him, clenching and unclenching his fists as though he was barely restraining the urge to leap for the older man's throat and choke the life out of him. Though, it could be just as possible that he was trying not to perform the same fatal maneuver on one of his female tormentors.

"Come on, Zero," sighed Tiffany, clambering to her feet and dusting invisible dirt off of her jeans. "We're sorry if we're really upsetting you. If you want us to stop, all you have to do is ask."

"He knows that, though," Lyndsey muttered as Zero turned slowly to face the curly haired brunette, his silver hued eyes narrowed to mere steely slits.

"He might not," Olivia pointed out thoughtfully, looking Zero up and down with a slight frown on her face. The boy did look a might too pissed off to be playing up that he was having any sort of enjoyment with their teasing anymore.

It got quiet for a moment as Tiff offered her hand in a peaceful manner to Zero, as though trying to appease him, and everyone else just sat to the side and watched the animal tamer at work with her gray haired quarry, who seemed uncertain at first, watching her with a suspicious look in his eyes, still tensed.

"Calm down," she urged him gently, extending her hand a little farther to him.

Zero's muscles loosened up a bit, and his shoulders slumped visibly. The look in his eyes became almost docile, and he looked just about ready to crack one of his wise-ass smiles when the office door swung open and a parade marched in. Or at least Brittney would have called it a parade. There were at least five different men walking in, two blonds, two brunettes, and a tall red head with a tattoo clearly exposed on the top of his left hip.

Then it was all over. Zero lunged for Tiffany, dragging her to the floor, his teeth bared in a snarl as he went for her throat… Or at least, that's what Olivia was imagining as she watched Zero immediately tense up again like a cornered animal, and his nostrils flared as though he scented something lethal coming his way. But he didn't back down from the large group of males entering the room, and instead drew himself up to his full height as he leveled an icy cold stare at the taller brunette male, who headed the small troupe.

The brunette seemed unperturbed by this rather hostile treatment, and instead politely inclined his head to Zero as he passed, though a shorter blond in the group gave the platinum haired boy the closest thing to a death stare that Tiff had ever seen. It was what she would have imagined if someone had managed to put a picture next to the idiom "If looks could kill" in a dictionary.

The rest of the group didn't seem to pay any mind to the silent but unfriendly exchange between either of the men and Zero, and the brunette stepped around the silvery haired youth to approach the headmaster, only giving the four girls to the side the most cursory of glances, as though not really convinced they were of any severe consequence to him.

"Well," Tiffany muttered in an aside to Olivia, who unconsciously leaned closer to better hear her, "_He _seems awful friendly."

Olivia eyed the brunette for a moment, and Tiffany had to refrain from either smirking or making a resigned face. She knew that look well. Livvi saw something Livvi liked…

"He doesn't like Zero," the girl said after a moment, meeting Tiffany's cocoa colored eyes with her jade ones. "At all."

"I figured as much. Look how uptight Zero is…"

And it was true. Zero was as taught as a tuned violin string, ready to snap at any moment, and his eyes weren't looking ahead of him, but to the side, over his shoulder, just out of his peripheral vision, at the brunette behind him. His shoulders were completely solid as every muscle in them contracted with tension, and his nostrils were still flared.

The Headmaster wasn't oblivious either, Tiffany noticed, glancing over in time to see the older man give Zero an almost pitying look before directing his attention to the band of men that had entered the room.

"Good evening, Kaname," he greeted the brunette who appeared to be the leader. "How can I help you?"

Tiffany took in Kaname's appearance as he began to speak in a low voice to the Headmaster, something or other about there being a ball soon to entertain the students, she wasn't really listening. She noticed he was exceptionally good looking, though not in the way a man of her taste would be. But, regardless, he definitely had some good genetics working for him. He had a slender face, with defined cheekbones under a creamy complexion, not quite pale, but definitely fair. He had a straight, regal nose—though the heck she would notice the dude's conk, she really had no idea—and long, almost girlish eyelashes that emphasized the curve of his almond shaped eyes, which were a luxurious shade of burgundy. It was definitely not a color she would expect eyes to be, but, for some reason, it suited this guy. Then there was his hair. It was a shimmering mahogany color, and fell in short, elegant waves down to the nape of his neck, which was hidden by the high, white collar of what could only be a school uniform. Some of the waves ended in gentle curls, some conforming to the curve of his neck, and his bangs hung attractively in his face. As he lifted his hand to make a gesture of some sort, she noticed he had very elegant hands, with long, slender fingers ending in perfectly manicured fingernails—did the guy really get a manicure, she wondered vaguely. He lowered his hand again to the top of the Headmaster's desk, and turned his head a little more to glance over his shoulder at something near her, and his eyes were at half-mast, his impossibly long, dark lashes casting intriguing shadows in the luminous burgundy depths of them.

Tiffany blinked. Whoa… Okay, so the dude might not be her type, but, man, he knew how to work what his mama had given him. She wondered how much he'd gotten from his dad, too…

A slight stirring of movement from just next to the brunette caught her attention, and she immediately changed her attention focus to take in the tall, slender blond boy beside him. Almost immediately, though, she had to avert her gaze, because, much to her surprise, the boy was looking right at her, and not as though he'd just been giving her a passing glance. More like he'd been watching her for the past few minutes. His gaze was intense, and in the single second she'd taken to glance up at him, she'd taken note of three things. To start, his eyes were the most startling shade of green that she'd ever seen, almost like when baby grass starts to grow, fresh and new, but it was also like emeralds in the way they shone. His eyelashes were lightly colored, like his hair, but long, and shimmered like snow. The second thing she'd noticed was that he had the face of an angel, just as handsome if not more so than his friend, with skin like a porcelain doll's, smooth and unblemished, and the way his face was shaped, so simply but so elegantly, with the hints of dimples around the corners of his mouth, was just beautiful, if a man could really be beautiful. And, thirdly, he had the hottest mouth she'd ever seen on any man alive.

I mean, _damn_! He had the kind of mouth that woman fantasized about. Soft and just full enough to be hot without being feminine, with a slight flush of color and just the slightest of a smile to entrance anyone looking.

_Hot damn…_

She sat silently in her chair, feeling her heart thump against her ribcage, and then, against her better judgment, glanced up once more at the blond boy, her eyes practically devoured the glimmering highlights of gold in his already luminous tresses and having the sudden, insane urge to tunnel her hands through his hair, then her eyes locked with his again…_and he was still staring at her. _

His gaze was politely interested and curiosity was prominent in the way his head was tilted slightly at an angle, as though to examine her more thoroughly from a better vantage point. He still had the trace of a smile on his face, and his hands were interlocked behind his back as he rocked back slightly on his heels. When their eyes met this time, he smiled even more openly, his expression open, friendly, but she looked away again, feeling a lump coming up in her throat that she had to swallow before she choked on it.

"Kiryu," a voice said then, startling her, and Olivia, who had just been about to ask if she was alright, having noticed that she seemed to be having some trouble. "Who are your friends?"

Zero glanced over as the girls glanced up, and Tiffany felt startled to realize that the voice had come from the blond she'd just been ogling. (There was no better word for it, unfortunately.) He was _still _looking at her, much to her disbelief and embarrassment, and smiled brilliantly as he met her eyes for the third time.

"Friends?" Zero said, sounding as though the word were a foreign concept to him.

"Oh, yeah, that's nice, Zero, thanks," Lyndsey said, reaching over to punch him lightly in the shoulder, rolling her eyes. "Act as though we're not your friends."

"We aren't," Brittney reminded her wisely. "You can't be friends with your employees."

Zero's expression became instantly drawn as the Headmaster barely managed to stifle a laugh, and the others in the room simply looked bemused.

"Don't start, Britt," Zero said curtly. "I am _not _nor will I ever be your ho."

Immediate silence followed his statement, and after a split second to consider why that was, Zero slapped a hand to his face and cursed eloquently so Brittney snickered and Lyndsey smirked. Tiffany was surprised not to hear anything coming out of Olivia, and glanced over in time to see that her friend had glanced from Zero to the tall brunette man, named Kaname, and away again, her cheeks slightly pink. Tiffany glanced over as well at Kaname, and felt a jolt of surprise to find him looking attentively back at her friend, his eyes strangely intent on the girl even as she continued to keep her eyes firmly averted from his. Tiffany could see Liv's lower lip was caught between her teeth and she was chewing nervously on it.

Well, she thought wearily, glancing over at the blond boy as Zero proceeded to overcome his embarrassment and explain just who his four companions were, at least she wasn't the only one with guy problems…


End file.
